


a story of three lifetimes

by Ejunkiet



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Love and Loss, Monster of the Week, love letter to RTD-era Who, this house does not acknowledge the new rose/tentoo short story, yearning. so much yearning.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:40:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22186495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ejunkiet/pseuds/Ejunkiet
Summary: Nine. Ten. Ten (too). Ninerose & Tenrose. A love letter.--Still, there's no denying that she's changed him. Made him more like the man he used to be - the man he wanted to be for her.It's not perfect, not like before the war - but at least it's close. Maybe as close as he can get.
Relationships: Metacrisis Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler, Ninth Doctor/Rose Tyler, Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Comments: 15
Kudos: 33





	1. Nine.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He doesn't remember much from the time immediately following the war._

_Before Rose, he was walking in the dark. Feet bare, eyes closed, his path strewn with broken glass - he didn't care if his feet sliced open on the shards, didn’t care if he stumbled and fell, as long as he kept moving._

_After -_

_Rose reminds what it is to live - to touch and to hold and to care for and protect, and maybe even lo-_

_He can't say it. He won’t say it; he lost the right to that word, that concept, many lifetimes ago._

_But still. It's different, after._

\--

He doesn't remember much from the time immediately following the war.

\--

For a while, he wanders. Moving (always moving), a nameless traveller amongst the endless landscape of time and space, an observer, there to watch as time unfolds and the lives of the many worlds play out, unencumbered, untouched by his influence.

He wanders as if he could lose himself, forget who he is, what he is, and what he did.

Often he finds himself back on Earth. It’s a habit, one that’s hard to break, and with all the memories he's made there, the companions he's found, he has to admit he has a soft spot for humanity. Not a noble species, nor inherently good or brilliant- but in that lies the potential. That spark.

A reminder of what this was all for, a treacherous voice in the back of his mind whispers - and he strides forward to drown it out, starts up the TARDIS and moves on to a different town, a different time, a different planet.

Time passes, but in the same way, it doesn't. It almost feels like a dream - half-lived and poorly remembered - but it's safe. Peaceful, even.

\--

He doesn’t know how long he continues like this before something changes.

\--

He gets involved, in the end. He can’t help himself.

He’s just returned from a quick tour through the 21st century with all its people and industry and complacency when the TARDIS had been pulled up short, sputtering to a stop in central London, of all places, sometime after the first human millenium. 

He'd been fixing up the ship when he'd caught the signal - and he can't sit idly by while there's a threat, not when it's this level - the last member of a species he thought extinct lashing out to destroy another - not when it's the actions of his people and their war that had driven it to such a desperate act in one first place.

It's against his better judgement, but in the end, it's also inevitable. 

Then he meets Rose.

\--

Their first meeting is short and undercut by danger - almost unremarkable by his standards. He saves her life, escorts her out of the building, and that would be it, on any other day.

There's something about her though, something about the way her hand wraps tightly within his, her grip strong as he leads her through the hallways, and he asks for her name, almost as an afterthought.

Rose Tyler.

He doesn't expect to see her again, yet he's not surprised when he tracks the living plastic back to a council flat and there she is, blonde and brash and ever so human. She takes it all in stride, inviting him into her home and offering him a cup of tea like he’s an old friend come to visit, and it’s all so familiar that he almost wonders if he’s been here before.

Except he couldn’t have. Besides, she doesn’t recognise this face - he barely knows it himself, and he realises he’s hardly looked in a mirror in the months - years, maybe - since he’d regenerated. 

(When he does, there’s very little he recognises in the face that stares back at him. Roughened features, long nose, eyes as blue as his last face, if not as kind. The kind of stare that could cleave a man in two. It fits - this face, this life.)

She saves his life, later, and he can’t help but ask her to join him, offering her a roundtrip ticket to the other side of the galaxy.

She turns him down.

He's not entirely surprised - he's not a big charmer, this time around - and he almost leaves for good, halfway through the motions for Alpha Centauri - before something stops him.

He doesn't look back, but maybe this time he does.

When the wail of the TARDIS engine quiets down, he pops his head back out and makes her another offer - a proper one, really - and this time - this time, she smiles and takes his hand.

\--

He almost loses her. Twice. 

They've been travelling together for less than a week - barely a blink in the vast expanse of time and space - but she trusts him, fully and wholeheartedly, with her life.

He can't help but think that's a mistake.

She's still jubilant, excited by the threat, the danger, and he thinks about her youth, her naivety. It's been a while since he'd travelled with someone so young, not since - since before.

(It’s not something he likes to think about.)

The first time, it’s a fluke - the curse of the time traveller. He takes her to see the end of the world, and they get embroiled in a conspiracy that nearly leads to destruction of the space station - more than the earth is lost that day, and it’s a tragedy he can’t seem to escape, no matter where he goes, what he does.

In Utah it happens again -- but this time it's him, his decisions, his actions, that place her life at risk, putting her smack bang in the line of fire. He acts - unlike himself. Or rather, more like the self that he has become, instead of the self he wants to be. 

She gets left behind, another sacrifice in a war that has claimed lives beyond count. It’s a choice that has to be made, so he makes it - and the cost is great, too great, more blood added to a debt he can never repay.

But this time he gets another chance - a chance to make the right choice, and he takes it.

He saves her, and he thinks that maybe this life will be different. Better.

\--

He keeps his promise and shows her the world. 

By that, he means he shows her Cardiff.

(It goes about as well as to be expected.)

\--

It takes him a while to realise that he's changing, and even longer to realise that the reason behind it is her.

It's slow at first, subtle enough that he can almost ignore it, pretend it's not happening - but it's there in the way her hand fits in his, the way the simple gesture soothes the anger that simmers in the pit of his stomach, patches over his wounds.

It's healing, he realises later during the chaos of the London blitz, watching as a young mother overcomes her fear to embrace her child - and it's a startling thought. He's not sure he's earned it. 

(He's a bit of a coward, this time around.)

He catches her looking at him, sometimes. He knows what she wants from him - knows it with the same surety that he can never give it to her, not in the way she wants it, not in the way she deserves.

So he pretends he doesn't see it, ignores the tightening sensation in his chest when her eyes turn to another more handsome face, a dashing smile. He curses Jack under his breath (and out loud, too) although the feeling abates when he proves his mettle and saves their lives in turn. 

Later, after they've returned to the TARDIS, she takes his hand and the warm feeling returns. He lets it.

(This time, everybody lived. Maybe it's time he allowed himself that, as well.)

\--

It shouldn't have come as a surprise that it wasn't meant to last.

The Dalek fleet is descending on the Earth, vulnerable and unprotected, and they're out of time.

It's another tragedy, another terrible loss - an entire, remarkable species ended before their time, a casualty of someone else's war.

He keeps his promise, though. It's a small thing in the face of such an inglorious end, but it means - something. In some ways, it means everything.

He hopes Rose will forgive him.

\--

She comes back (and she's brilliant).

\--

She tastes like copper and steel with an undercurrent of plasma, but even with all the power coursing through her, the strength of the TARDIS itself, he can still taste her beneath it all - sweet and bitter, like the coffee they'd shared that morning - and it's that he holds onto as he takes the vortex into himself.

He hopes that with whatever happens next, however this ends, that he still has her and her smile, and her laugh, and her compassion and humanity -- all of it.

_("I love you," she'd said, and he'd known, of course he'd known, and he - he wants -_

_But it doesn't matter - it's too late for that now.)_

He hopes that whoever he becomes will be a better man than the one he is now.


	2. Ten.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He's alive. He's alive, and she's here with him, and he could kiss her again._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's time for the story of the Tenth doctor, and hojeeze. Buckle up, the yearning has been cranked up to max.

It's never quite the same each time. Regeneration. 

(Except for the dying bit. There’s not much that changes there, or with the pain; brilliant and sparkling, until it's all he can see, all he can breathe and feel until he feels like he's burning alive, and then-

And then-

It's gone. He's gone. He's someone else, and it feels -

He feels - 

**Alive**.)

\--

He's alive, and -

He's here, in his beloved tardis and she's here with him. _Rose_ is here with him, and they're both alive and safe, and the daleks are _dead_ and-

They _won_.

He could break into song, he could dance, he could _kiss her again_ \- 

"Doctor?"

The giddiness in his chest fades at the tremor in her voice, soft as if she’s about to break, and when he looks over at her and reads the look on her face, the pain and the confusion, he realises - oh. 

Oh.

He hadn't prepared her for this. 

What had he said? Something about dying, and rebirth and not being the same. Does it even matter?

They stumble through the doors of the Tardis together - and his systems are shutting down, the regeneration process taking its toll - and he doesn’t have enough time to tell her what’s happening, to _warn her_ -

\- But he trusts that she will know what to do. And - he knows that she will keep him safe, with the same certainty that he knows that the Tardis will never leave him, that his key will always fit the lock.

"I trust you, Rose", he manages to say, the words barely audible, his throat hoarse from the change, before he blacks out.

\--

It takes time, but probably not as long as it should have, for her to trust him again.

At first, he thinks she'll leave him. He's asleep and not asleep, neural circuits singed and damaged as he drifts on the edge of consciousness, aware and unaware of the events around him. He can always feel her, though, and it's that as much as anything that wakes him the second time - her absence.

 _The Doctor is gone,_ she'd said, voice coming out garbled in the TARDIS speakers due to the disruption caused by the starship's engines, and it's those words that stick with him after he wakes up. 

_He's gone._

Did she mean it?

After the events at Christmas, he struggles to find the words to ask her about it - to ask her what she wants. Whether she wants to continue this endless journey with him through time and space, or leave and return to a normal life, and all the safety and comfort it can provide her.

She surprises him by speaking first, breaking the silence that had settled between them since the confrontation with the Prime Minister, her voice as soft as the falling ash around them. 

“It’s really you, isn’t it?”

She takes his hand then, and the pieces fit back into place as they head over to Jackie's apartment, and then there's hats and turkey and gifts and god, he thinks he loves her. 

He thinks he was reborn loving her.

\--

They continue with their travels much as they had before.

Except - something’s different. He can sense it when he looks at her with these new eyes, sharper and keener than before, feels it himself when he’s close to her - the draw between them, an underlying attraction he hasn’t felt since - since he was a much younger man.

At times, when their eyes meet and the stare lingers, and he can feel the heat of their proximity, he wants to kiss her.

She doesn’t remember that first kiss, in Bad Wolf Bay. He knows that, now - it had become clear shortly after his change that she had lost her memories of that moment - of the siege and the vortex, and all the pain that surrounded it.

And - it’s probably for the best.

(He remembers, though. Remembers the intent behind the action, the sentiment - his final promise as he'd taken her face into his hands and kissed her - lips pressed against hers, tender and soft as he'd inhaled the heart of the TARDIS.

It’s a memory he will keep with him throughout the years, until the end of it all.)

\--

He _can_ recognise, though, that he has _changed_. 

Well, of course he has - that's the point of regeneration, the beginning of a new cycle - but he can see it in her eyes when she looks at him. He feels it too, when he looks into a mirror and doesn't recognise his reflection.

She says she doesn't mind his changes. Himself - he's not too sure.

He's closer to her age, at least; younger, and softer, in ways he didn't expect. Less broken apart and poorly put back together. Better.

There's something about the way her hand fits in his just like it used to, the warmth in her eyes when she looks at him (when she thinks he can't see), that makes him think that this form had been made for her.

It's an impossible thought. Well, he shouldn't say that, he'd never say something he could never prove - but still, it's highly unlikely.

Still, there's no denying that she's changed him. Made him more like the man he used to be - the man he wanted to be for her. 

It's not perfect, not like before the war - but at least it's close. Maybe as close as he can get.

\--

It’s not long after their reunion that he finds Sarah Jane - or, rather, she finds him.

She’s older, but still beautiful, brilliant with that fiery curiosity that had drawn him to her in the first place - and it's a sharp reminder from his past of what's to come.

_"He always did like them young."_

The words dig at him, sharp claws that catch and tear, but she's not wrong, and maybe that's the worst part. The younger they are, the longer they will travel with him, and he has to swallow the shame that comes with the realisation.

Sarah Jane is the one to make the decision to not to come with him this time, and he hopes that this has given her the closure she needs, the space to finally move past him and find a partner of her own.

(He still misses her.)

Then comes Reinette. Beautiful, brilliant Reinette - another kindred spirit, taken from him too soon - and it’s another tragedy, another mark on the tally of the dead.

Later that night, the guilt eats at him, reminds him that he has to put a stop to this eventually, this endless cycle of companionship and loss.

(- but he doesn’t think he could stand it. In the end, he is flawed - he is selfish, and at times cruel - and he doesn’t think he can take the reality of being truly, singly alone.)

\--

After - after the TARDIS malfunction and her father and _Micky_ \- 

It's an old wound, and then it’s a loss - one that he has become familiar with over the years (decades, centuries), but she hasn't felt yet - saying goodbye to a friend. 

He tries his best to make it up to her, takes her to see some of the greats of the mid-twentieth century, and it's a mess, as it always is - but they save the day, and if he's holding her hand a little more tightly after, she doesn't mention it, just smiles and grips him back, squeezing just as tight.

\--

Tragedy becomes a constant companion on their adventures, culminating at _Krop Tor_ , the impossible planet - and if anything, the moniker is an understatement.

The TARDIS is gone, leaving them stranded in a facility on the verge of falling into a black hole - and once they realise the reality of the situation and the extent of the danger they’ve found themselves in, she doesn’t blame him for it, although she should.

She trusts in him, and that more than anything gives him the strength to continue, to _believe_ that he can fix this, save them all (Ood included).

In the deep, he finds a way to put the feeling into words - all the jumbled up emotions he’s been carrying since the end of Bad Wolf Bay, since his rebirth - 

_I believe in her_.

It's a confession, more than anything - spoken freely and willingly and joyously because it’s true, because it’s _her_. It's a shout of defiance in the darkness of the pit, spat in the face of a creature much older than should be possible.

It's that thought that keeps him going as he stumbles through the dark, a beacon that flares as he finds his hands on familiar wooden panelling and he realises he’s done it, everything's going to be alright, they're going to make it.

When he stumbles out of the doors of the TARDIS back at the station, she’s the first thing he sees, and as she leaps into his arms, he holds her tight, marvelling at the feeling of her there, wondering if he'll ever be able to let her go.

\--

(But he doesn't say it, doesn't want to say it until it's too late, until he's a flickering projection on a beach and time is slipping through his fingers as if the seconds were grains of sand and he's trapped, suffocating, under a glass dome -

"Rose Tyler," he says, and then she is gone.

His hearts skip a beat, and a part of him is missing, too.)


	3. Ten (too): an end.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _She chooses to stay. It's the right decision._

He travels alone for a while after the dust has settled.

Or at least, that was the plan - but the TARDIS must have some of its own, as no sooner have his tears dried, he turns away from the console to find himself face to face with another mystery in the shape of Donna Noble, runaway bride from Chiswick.

There are more adventures, more companions, and the years begin to fall away beneath him, time moving on, as it always does. 

But he doesn't forget. 

Her presence lingers, following him through the depths of time, an echo he can't shake, doesn't want to. 

He can't bring himself to remove her things from the TARDIS, and everywhere he looks, he's reminded of her: her scarf tied to the railing in the back of the console room, nicknacks they'd picked up from various planets littering the dash. Her face follows him into his dreams, haunting his memories even when he can barely remember himself, even as his new companion tries desperately to prove herself to him, again and again, even after she finally leaves him.

Martha Jones had deserved better, but at least her departure had been a choice, and not one made through desperation or tragedy.

He continues his journey alone then, truly alone, and thinks he's better for it.

\--

She finds him again, many years later, as of course she does - she's brilliant, his Rose, always has been. She saves him again, as she was always going to, and for a brief, untenable moment, everything settles into place, feels _right_.

Then they're forced to make a choice.

(He's forced to make a choice. It's unfair, the odds stacked against her favour - but he couldn't leave this to chance, and the reality is: he needs her.

 _He_ needs her. The man that shares his face, his memories, but not the most important part - his hearts.

If there's one thing that can temper the fire in him, ease the rage - it's her.

So he sets the path, burying down deep his own emotions, his own feelings - and if she deserved better, well. She would never know.)

She chooses to stay. 

It's the right decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it, folks! There is an epilogue in the works for this (an afterwards fic with Ten II), but it may not ever see the light of day, so this will remain marked as complete.
> 
> Thank you for the feedback so far! Find me on tumblr as ejunkiet!! :D


End file.
